The Sorcerer. A Tale from the German of Veit Weber.
London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1795.
8vo, [2], 210 pp, lacks half title; light scattered foxing, else very good. Full modern calf, gilt and blind tooled Oxford panels by Felton Bookbinding. Carefully cleaned and pressed, faint crease in upper outside corner of many leaves, almost untrimmed with some leaves retaining the deckle.
§ First edition in English and first English edition. One of Robert Huish's early books, a translation of Wachter's "Die Teufelbeschworung." Wachter is considered to be of great importance in the development of both the German and English Gothic novel and this title was a seminal publication in the origins of the Gothic novel, preceding Burger's "Leonora" (1796) and "The Monk" (1796) by Lewis who certainly plagiarised Wachter's account for the finale of his book. Godwin noted in his diary that he read this book and it is all but certain that Percy and Mary Shelley (and perhaps Byron) would have read it too. The hero dies after hurling himself into the ocean, his eyes pecked out by cormorants, his body smashed on rocks by his fall, suffering an utterly gruesome death by drowning that takes no less than six pages of purple prose to describe. Ironically Shelley was to drown (though less elaborately) some 21 years later. ESTC T100455. Item #125019
Price: $3,750.00